My tattoo is healing well and I’m once again ready to start my workout. When I got to the gym I realized though that I forgot my exercisebook at home so I took it pretty easy today. First a few minutes on the stairmaster as warmup. Then three strenght exercises, pull-ups, push-ups and squats. 3 sets with 21, 15, and 9 reps. After that I spent 35 minutes on the Elliptical machine. When I got home and could relax for a bit it started hurting all over. But that’s not gonna keep me away from the gym tomorrow too.

When I got off work Vasoula picked me up and she drove us to Full Circle Tattoo again. She was super nervous that she would regret it, but her birthdate in Roman numbers on her arm turned out really pretty.

After that I had a small dinner at KFC and then she drove me home. A very nice evening!

This morning I thought I deserved a long sleep-in after my long day yesterday. I woke up by a text from Vasoula at 11am and one hour later I picked her up and we went to the pool. There weren’t so many people there, most of the families came at 3pm. We stayed in the water a lot because it was so warm today, around 24C. I didn’t get burned at all even if I was at the pool for almost six hours. I read a lot and I’m kinda dreading the day when I’m done. When will The Winds of Winter come out?!

Nothing more than that didn’t really happen. We had scones for dinner which was awesome. I love scones :).

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

It wasn’t so hard to get up at 7am on a Saturday morning as I thought. But I was really dissapointed when I looked out. Cloudy and it almost looked as if it would start to rain. But I ate breakfast, and put on my exercise clothes. I got there a few minutes before 8 and there were already four players playing. They introduced themselves and when another guy came I warmed up with him. I was a little rusty but it came back to me so fast! My first game was a few minutes later with a guy called Richard. We won with almost 15-0. After that I played with a lot of different guys and girls. I played mostly at the advanced court but at the beginner court too. I played with a beginner called Kristen and after our game we talked a lot. She just moved here from North Carolina and I will probably see more of her. I’m definitely gonna start playing with these guys. It was so much fun and especially since the weather today was perfect! It was cloudy, so no sun in the eyes. No wind whatsoever and it wasn’t too warm to play for a couple of hours. I noticed that I started to get really tired after two hours and sat next to the courts watching. In the background was the ocean, the sun started to peek out and soon enough not a single cloud could be seen as far as you could see. There were hardly any waves today so no surfers but there were a lot of people standing on boards paddling in the water. I totally forgot what that’s called, but I know that I’m gonna try it on the LCC meeting in July. Dolphins were in the water too and I was so happy. I couldn’t understand that this is my life now. I’m practically living at the beach and from now on I will spend all my Saturday mornings at Ponto Beach playing what I love!

At noon I drove home, took a shower, had a little lunch and then Vasoula picked me up and we drove to San Diego. Our first stop was at UCSD Bookstore. It was huge and inside were so much stuff! I bought a hoodie and a tanktop. I paid with my giftcard I got from my family so I didn’t feel that I ”lost” money on my account. Vasoula didn’t want to buy anything but she got out of there with a tanktop in a bag too, haha. I’m a bad influence on her.

Next stop was Full Circle Tattoo were she made an appointment for Monday. She took a late time so I could follow her there after work because I get off much later than her. The guy in the reception recognized me and told me my tattoo was healing very well and that I could start with my workout again! Awesome! I have big plans for my workout from now on. I’m gonna do the schedule I got from my PT, weight lifting three times a week. At least twice I’m gonna swim at the gym (or in the community pool maybe, if there aren’t so many kids, which it usually isn’t between noon and 3pm) And I will try to play beach volleyball at least twice every week. They have meetings on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. They are playing from 3pm to sunset and since the sun is setting pretty late now I think I might be able to play a little after work.

Our third stop was Las Americas where we met Karin and Victoria, a big Premium outlet mall at the border to Mexico. It was bigger than the one here in Carlsbad. I liked it! I managed to not buy anything until the last hour of our stay there when we entered the Nike Factory Store… Since I’m working out so much I need more work out clothes so I bought another pair of shorts that match my neon yellow sports bra. They are grey on the outside and yellow inside. I also bought a tanktop and a new black sports bra. Exactly the same as the one I have but I need one to switch with. When I paid I was looking for Karin and Victoria at the shoes department. Bad idea… I found a really nice pair of shoes to wear at the gym. It’s the same there, always good to switch with something. They were on a big sale so it wasn’t so bad. But I did feel a little bad, I wasn’t supposed to buy anything today. But I needed it :).

After our shopping (I wasn’t the only one buying a lot of stuff from the Nike store) we drove to Fashion Valley were we met Jessica, Maj and Pernille. We ate at a restaurant called Stacked. I never knew it was there but it was an awesome restaurant. First of all, you ordered on iPads on the table, and second, you could order whatever you wanted. You could pick ingredients for your salad, burger or pizza. I took a salad, but one that was already on the menu. Chicken, pecans, cranberries and more things I really don’t remember. It was really good. I felt so good about myself after two hours in the sand and a salad for dinner so I ordered a ice cream sundae too. One that I picked the ingredients for myself. Yummy, but cold.

Back home and I am so tired now. But I had a really great day :). But tomorrow me and Vasoula are going to the beach, far away from stores, just to relax the whole day. Lets hope it’s nice weather tomorrow too!

  The Mexican border.

Just got home from an evening in Mira Mesa with 5 other au pairs. I’ve been meeting so many new au pairs lately it’s crazy. At 8pm we met up at Applebee’s for dinner. I had sirloin with shrimp and it was really good. We had to hurry after so we wouldn’t miss the movie across the street at 9:15pm. Fortunately it was commercials and trailers until 9:40 so we didn’t miss anything. But since it was premiere night and you don’t have seat numbers here in the Sates we got the worst seats ever, first row… We’ll se tomorrow if I will have any neck pains.

The movie was okay. I didn’t understand any of it so I think I have to read the book! But it was well done and pretty with the 20’s theme.

Before that I spent most of my afternoon outside watching the boy playing with his two different playdates. And later in the evening the girl and her playdate too. When I was sitting there on the curb and my hostdad was home he told me a really funny thing. Today at his work there had been a tiny mouse. It dissappeared after a while but some people went home because there was a mouse in the building. That’s so ridicolous, haha! Mouses aren’t that dangerous.

In my freetime I was at the pool reading. Well, reading for 20 minutes before I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more and slept the last hour. I’m glad my sunscreen is working :).

It’s super late now and tomorrow I have to be at Ponto Beach at 8am to play some beach volleyball for the first time since I left Sweden. It’s gonna be so much fun and I hope I haven’t forgotten too much. I’m not sure what to wear, in the mornings it is really cold and I don’t have any warm exercise clothes here… I guess I have to run a round a lot!

Good night/morning!

This class has been very easy. I think I am to good at speaking American English, but I learn a lot of stuff I had no idea about before. But it is a bit confusing though when you are thinking about your speech. Tonight was about how to shorten words and how to intonate sentences. I think I did pretty good on all the excersises. But it’s going better if I’m not thinking about what he’s saying.

Before that me and both the kids were doing Mothers Day’s cards. The boy wasn’t so happy about it, but when I told him he could do something card-like on a toilet paper roll he shone up and started painting the roll and writing and drawing hearts on it. Pretty and special!

After school, and before our arts and crafting, we had a little visit to Starbucks and their Frappucino Happy Hour, half price on all the frappucinos. I tried Chai Frappucino and it was really good. Almost as good as the warm one.

The day didn’t start very good. I overslept, my second time since I got here. I woke up at 7:30 am when the girl knocked on my door. At first I thought I accidently turned off my alarm like I did two months ago. But when I got up I realized that my phone was dead. My first thought was that it broke down like a month ago. But when I plugged it in the computer it started charging. Puh!

I can proudly say that today was the first day in a very long time that I ate my daily calorie goal of 1400. Now I just need to get every day to be like that! Easier said than done unfortunately…

My day started with an animal I haven’t seen here yet, a racoon! It was walking right outside the fence when I had breakfast, cool!

Before lunch I spent my time at a swim center close by because the boy started his swimming lessons today. Here in America the kids learn how to crawl before they learn how to swim ”normally”. It’s awesome and I’m super jealous. I want to learn how to crawl so I can start swimming at my gym as conditioning.

In my freetime I didn’t so much, watched an episode of Two and a Half Men and then slept a little. After school the boy had a playdate and me and the girl were inside making cards for mothers day on Sunday. It’s nice sitting down doing arts and craft with them. I’m hoping maybe me and the boy can do something tomorrow afternoon when the girl is at soccer practice.

For dinner tonight I made tacos. It was good but kinda spicy, don’t know why, I did exactly as I usually do. But everyone ate and were happy anyway! It was a very nice dinner tonight, a lot of laughter and conversation :).

I can’t believe one third of my year is already done. It’s still eight months left wich is quite much, but four months passed so fast! I am glad I’ve been doing a lot of fun stuff already so I won’t feel stressed out when I only have one third left.

Time goes by too fast… But at the same time I want it to go faster. I can’t wait till I go to San Luis Obispo (I have to book those flight tickets soon!), Phoenix and when mom comes. June is gonna be a packed month!

I heard that nickname today and I totally understand it. It has been raining the whole day and it’s probably gonna be cloudy the whole month. It’s just the way it is in California in the spring apperantly. But on the other hand, the summer is gonna go on until October, so I’m not complaining.

Before lunch I went with the boy to the hair salon. He was super handsome when he came out of the chair. The hairdresser is a Swedish one and she was really nice.

In my freetime I read in the UCSD Extension catalogue and there are so many courses. I think I’m gonna skip the environmental course and take something else instead but I have no idea what! That weekend course in LA about how to write a resumé and so on seems awesome too. I have some time to decide fortunately!

After school we were watching the girl’s musical in the school cafeteria. We didn’t see the whole thing, it was two hours, and went home instead.

At the dinner table we had the door to the backyard open and we heard coyotes! I haven’t seen any here yet but they live right next to our house in the big ditch. Scary!

Now I’m gonna go to bed and watch the new episode of Game of Thrones! 🙂

My fifth LCC meeting was today, we were four girls + one friend walking around in Carlsbad downtown at the annual Street Faire. It was fun and nice. And apperantly something you have to do while in the States, going to a street faire. When my LCC saw me she said that I was getting prettier and prettier for everytime she saw me and that I have a really nice tan. She is so nice and she loved my tattoo and was super happy for me that my mom is coming to visit so soon! I like her :).

I didn’t buy anything except for lunch consisting of a teriyaki chicken stick and a bb corn on the cob. Then we went in to the ”cool” area where you could drink. I didn’t because I was driving but we listened to the band playing live for a while. After that we thought we were pretty much done with the street faire. I went to Oceanside and a store called JoAnn. I wanted to buy thin ribbons to make a new footlink. I’m half done and so far it looks nice.

I was home for a little while, had a delicious dinner with the family and then I went to Mira Mesa to meet up Jessica at Starbucks. When I got there Jessica stood and talked to Maj and Pernille who had decided to spend their night there too. A weird coincidence. But what was more a weird coincidence was that the girls at the table next to ours looked Swedish and were Swedish! One Swedish au pair, her sister and one German au pair. Haha! We talked for a while and when they went home me and Jessica started doing what we were supposed to do, book flight + hotel to Phoenix in June! We found the perfect flight tickets so we don’t have to get off early from work and we will get 2 whole days in Phoenix. $250 for the whole weekend is pretty awesome. I’m super excited, it’s gonna be so much fun :).

I heard about a weekend course in LA tonight that seems nice. $350 and you learn how to write a resumé, how to act at a job interview and stuff like that. I’m gonna look into that and we’ll see what I’ll do. It’s too bad it’s so expensive to study here, there are a lot of courses I would like to take. I got a UCSD Extension catalog with all the summer courses yesterday. I will take a look in that one tomorrow!

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

Yesterday was an amazing day. I got up at 7am to take a shower and eat breakfast in peace and quite. Maj, Pernille and Jessica picked me up at 9am and we drove to LA. It took 2,5 hours with breaks. When we got there we were hungry and bought lunch. Our first attraction was the house of horrors. It was not fun, me and Maj held hands the whole time while screaming, haha!

The next attraction was the Studio Tour, we waited in line for 40 minutes and when we got out it was no line at all… The tour was really nice, I didn’t recognize much though. But the best part of it was the King King 360 3D it was AWESOME! We were sitting in the train in a tunnel where the ceiling and walls were a big screen showing a 3D movie of King Kong fighting two Tyrannosaurs Rex. The train was shaking and it was so cool.

I don’t remember what order we did everything else but we didn’t have time for everything but we did The Simpsons ride, the Animal Actors stage, Special Effect Stage, Shrek 4D and Water World. The Simpsons ride was nothing at all like I expected but it was awesome too. The Animal Actors were super cute and I think the boy would have loved the Water World show!

The park closed at 8pm and we ate dinner at Hard Rock Cafe at the Universal Studios Citywalk. Unfortunately it said Hollywood on those glasses too. I asked in the shop if I could have a shot glass instead but she said that she couldn’t give me one because it was in a different inventory or something. But when she packed down the glass it turned out to be a shot glass anyway and she said ”ssh, don’t tell anyone”, haha!

When I got home my mom had sent me a message on Facebook telling me that she had booked her flights! On June 19th 20pm I will see her again, I can’t wait!!

Now I am off to my 5th LCC meeting in Carlsbad downtown, there’s a Street Faire or something going on today.

Today was the warmest day since I got here. It was awesome! But it was kinda strange to sweat at 8:30am. Our thermometer said it was mid 80s F which is around 28C. The boy ran his usual four laps which is ¼ of a mile while we waited for the girls’ school to start. That school has a running club and a lot of the kids run at recess which is great. I found out about two weeks ago that the boy can get credited for the laps he runs in the morning and since I know that he really wanted to have more than 50 miles at the end of the year I’ve been encouraging him to run every morning and he is really happy that he has 50 miles now, five weeks before school ends. Kindergarten has two running days per week so he has limited time to finish all his running cards. One card in kindergarten is 5 miles and I think he just started on his 10th card. I’m impressed that a six-year-old has that huge ambition and follows it through.

Before lunch it was too warm to be outside for him so we sat inside painting and doing puzzles in his ant book. He recently got his ants to his gel ant farm and along with it came a book with interesting facts about ants and some puzzles. I think him and I should sit down some day and read it.

In my freetime I went to the pool. I only had one hour there but it was enough. I read some and got some new powers for the afternoon.

But when I picked up the kids from school they asked me if we could go to the pool. So we went there again and it was really too bad I couldn’t play so much with them because of the tattoo. The guy who did it specifically told me not to go in to any jacuzzis, saunas or swimming pools until it has healed. That sucks. But it shouldn’t be too long. We did some playing though and I had a really great time with the kids at the pool with all the other million children.

Dinner was takout from Cheesecake Factory, really good! Then I spent the evening with the kids and my hostmom in the living room watching Disney Channel. Kinda fun that I already know all the character in the shows the kids watch and I’m excited when commercials for new episodes run, haha!

Now I’m watching some series and soon I will be sounds asleep. I am so tired and tomorrow’s gonna be a long day at Universal Studios with Jessica, Maj, and Pernille :).